Despite significant improvements in computer networking technologies, audio and video broadcasting systems, and digital media player devices, it remains a challenge to share with another person a portion of a particular selection of digital media content. For example, when using a conventional media player device to listen to or view streaming digital media content, such as a movie, television program, news broadcast, sporting event, or user-generated program, a user may identify a particular portion of the content that the user would like to share with another person. A user may desire to share a single scene of a movie with another person, a particular news segment from a news program, or only those innings of a baseball game in which a particular team has scored a run. Most conventional media player devices do not have a mechanism that will allow a user to share a portion of digital media content—referred to herein as a media clip—with another person who is not present in time and location with the viewer.
Some media player devices provide the ability to record digital media content that is being streamed to, and presented at, the digital media player. However, these media player devices provide content recording capabilities primarily to enable time shifting—the recording of a program to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the user. Most of the media player devices with content recording capabilities do not provide the ability to transfer the recorded digital media content to another device for play back at the other device.
Another class of media player devices enables a functionality that is commonly referred to as location shifting. Location shifting involves the redirection of a stream of digital media content from a first media player device to a second media player device. For example, in a typical use case, a set-top box receives digital content over a broadcast network (e.g., television or radio network) and redirects the received stream of digital content over a computer network (e.g., an Internet Protocol, or IP-based network) to a mobile or personal media player device, such as a mobile handset or notebook computer. For location shifting to work properly, the network connection between the first media player device and the second media player device needs a bandwidth and throughput rate sufficient to support the transfer of the digital media content in near real time. Given the size (e.g., quantity of data) of the computer files involved, particularly with digital content encoded in a high quality formats (e.g., high definition formats), location shifting is not always a viable option.
Some media player devices may have feature sets that enable both time and location shifting. For example, a stream of digital media content that has been previously recorded to a first media player device (e.g., a set-top box) might be accessible from a remote media player device, such that it can be streamed from the first media player device to the remote media player device at a time of the user's selecting. However, here again the network connection between the two devices must be sufficient to support near real time streaming of large computer files. Furthermore, with conventional time and location shifting devices, the user does not have a convenient way to share only certain portions (e.g., media clips) of a selection of digital media content.